Fire Safety Research
The FAA conducts, manages, and supports research programs to improve fire safety in commercial transport aircraft.
The Fire and Cabin Safety Research Group provides an international framework for the coordination, prioritization, and integration of cabin and aircraft fire safety research among major civil aviation authorities. The goal is to enhance the effectiveness and timeliness of research to improve in-flight safety and post-crash survivability of transport category airplanes, supporting safety-related rulemaking and safety system development.
POC: Dhaval Dadia - Dhaval.dadia@faa.gov
The Aircraft Materials Fire Test Handbook will be available soon.
POC: Tina Emami - Tina.emami@faa.gov
Reports and other publications are available in the Fire Safety Collection on ROSA P.
Conferences and forum meetings keep the international aviation community informed about recent, ongoing, and planned research in aircraft fire and cabin safety. The events are open to anyone interested in the field, regularly attracting safety professionals from engineering, design, airline operations, maintenance, and research. This section will provide dates and registration links to upcoming meetings.
To improve the survivability of an in-flight or post-crash fire, researchers at the William J Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace developed the Aircraft Materials Fire Test Handbook. This Handbook scales down full-scale, jet-fueled fires into precise laboratory tests, which serve as a means of compliance for certification of materials on aircraft. The FAA conducts ongoing research to refine the current test methods in the handbook and develop new tests to ensure the test methods remain relevant, effective, and accurate.
POC: Tina Emami - Tina.emami@faa.gov
To advance global aviation safety, the FAA is investigating fire hazards from dangerous goods within the National Airspace System. Ongoing testing targets lithium batteries across all air transport methods, including cargo shipments and passenger-carried standalone cells or portable electronic devices. Resulting research data improves risk comprehension, enhances emergency response protocols, and guides updates to domestic and international regulations and standards.
POC: Daniel Keslar - Daniel.keslar@faa.gov
At the William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace, fire safety researchers are dedicated to improving the safety of cargo aircraft by addressing fire hazards associated with transporting lithium-ion batteries and other materials. FAA research actively supports the development and modernization of Fire Resistant Container and Fire Containment Cover design and performance standards by incorporating standardized battery fire loads within these cargo devices.
The minimum performance standard of Halon extinguishing agent replacements within aircraft cargo compartments is being updated to ensure sustainable alternatives to Halon are as effective or better at suppressing fires in the years ahead.
Additionally, smoke detection performance tests are being enhanced by standardizing smoke generation criteria as novel smoke detection technology emerges. Through collaboration with industry and regulatory partners, these initiatives aim to enhance fire safety protocols and ensure safer air cargo operations.
POC: Lindsey Anaya - Lindsey.p.anaya@faa.gov
Personnel at the William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace accomplish work to prevent unwanted accidental fire in the aircraft propulsion and fuel systems of large civil aircraft. The work is done in coordination with the associated community, government and/or corporate. In the last decades work occurred, and in some cases continues, to better passively and actively mitigate fire in this application. Testing has occurred:
- intending to replace the traditional fire-extinguishing agent in the powerplant fire-extinguishing system, halon 1301 (CF3Br), by testing in and reviewing results from a generic nacelle fire simulator or on an actual engine, looking at several candidates that were pure gaseous, pure solid aerosol, or a blended substance,
- improving the circumstances for the testing of components to prove their acceptable endurance against fire in the designated powerplant fire zone, and
- preventing aircraft fuel tank explosions.
Additional projects have also contributed to this community, including investigating the sensitivity of an optical fire detector and if a certain gaseous/solid-aerosol blended fire-extinguishing agent synergistically performed better than either of its component's individual behaviors. Approaches taken to accomplish any given project relate to 14 CFR FAR Part 25 Subpart E "Powerplant" and are variate and tuned to the curiosity being investigated.
POC: Doug Ingerson - Douglas.ingerson@faa.gov
General Information: 9-ACT-FIRESAFETY-INFO@faa.gov